In unveiling his $34.4 billion budget for 2015, Christie invoked the rhetoric of speeches past by calling for another round of reforms to the pension system. The governor’s proposed spending plan includes a $2.25 billion pension payment.

He chastised past governors and legislators for leaving behind a “legacy of years of irresponsibility” by paying little or nothing into the system. He praised himself and other lawmakers for touching “the third rail of politics” and choosing “to do what was hard and politically unsafe” by enacting the reforms.

“We have done it before and we must do it again,” Christie said.

But Democrats reacted skeptically to the idea, expressing confidence in the state’s current plan for pension payments and suggesting that a stagnant economy is choking revenues. Republican lawmakers are in step with more reforms, framing it as a necessity to avoid bankruptcy.

“I really don’t think we have a choice,” state Sen. Jennifer Beck, R-Monmouth, said. “We have to address it, particularly as you’re going to see other social obligations and priorities come into play and our discretionary dollars are limited to the fact that pension obligation, the cost of health care and debt are absorbing so much.”

According to the governor’s budget summary, $9 out of every $10 in new spending in the budget will go to public pension systems, health benefits and debt service. The state’s pension payment of $2.25 billion represents 6.5 percent of the budget, and pension payments are scheduled to increase to about $2.4 billion in coming years.

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“If you look at our fully phased-in pension system alone, it’ll be up close to 12, 13 percent of our budget. That’s scary stuff,” said Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon, R-Monmouth. “It’s a reality we have to live in. There were mistakes made by politicians before this governor and mistakes made by labor leadership — it isn’t all just the politicians. Both sides decided to make agreements that they should have known when they made those agreements were unsustainable without crushing the taxpayers of New Jersey. So we’ve got to face that.”

Democrats don’t think so. Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, D-Hudson, said that the Legislature needs “to let this work itself out.” Senate President Stephen Sweeney said that if the state sticks with the reforms passed in 2011, “the pension system will be fine.”

Jon M. Bramnick, the Assembly minority leader, praised Christie’s call for reform, emphatically, as “dealing with reality” and said Democrats will find it “very difficult” to “embrace serious long-term change when they don’t have to.”

“All I know is, you have to start to discuss the solutions now before you discuss them in bankruptcy court,” he said.